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Canada in the United Nations General Assembly from Trudeau to Trudeau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2019

Srdjan Vucetic Open the ORCID record for Srdjan Vucetic [Opens in a new window]  and
Bojan Ramadanovic
Srdjan Vucetic*
Affiliation:
Public and International Affairs, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, 120 University, FSS 6005D, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5
Bojan Ramadanovic
Affiliation:
Complex Systems Modelling Group, SFU's Big Data Hub, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

All Canadian governments say that Canada must look to its friends and allies and like-minded partners to achieve greater cooperation on global issues. But who are these countries exactly? To gain a better understanding of where Ottawa stands in the world, with whom and under what conditions, we analyze Canada's voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly from 1980 to 2017. We find that Canada's overall record tends toward that of Western European states. We find no evidence of greater affinity with US positions either when the Democrats are in power in Washington or when the conservative parties are in power in Ottawa. We identify a sharp pro-US turn in the Harper years and also confirm that the government of Justin Trudeau started off by maintaining rather than reversing this trend.

Résumé

Résumé

Le gouvernement canadien dit toujours que le Canada doit compter sur ses partenaires aux mêmes sensibilités pour obtenir une plus grande coopération sur les enjeux mondiaux. Mais que sont ces pays exactement ? Pour mieux comprendre comment Ottawa se positionne dans le monde, avec qui et dans quelles conditions structurelles, nous analysons l'affinité de certains pays avec le Canada à l'Assemblée générale des Nations Unies entre 1980 et 2017. Tout d'abord, nous constatons que, dans l'ensemble, le vote du Canada tend vers celui des États d'Europe Occidentale. Deuxièmement, nous ne trouvons aucune preuve d'affinité avec les positions américaines, que les démocrates soient au pouvoir à Washington ou que le parti conservateur règne à Ottawa. Troisièmement, nous identifions un fort mouvement pro-américain pendant les années Harper et non seulement sur les votes exprimés sur les résolutions concernant le Moyen-Orient.

Keywords

Canadian foreign policyTrudeaucontinentalismUnited Nations General AssemblyPolitique étrangère canadienneTrudeaucontinentalismeAssemblée générale des Nations Unies
Type
Research Article/Étude originale
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 79 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2019

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